


Making of a New Night

by Anonymous



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies), Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: F/M, Magical Tattoos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-30
Updated: 2017-04-30
Packaged: 2018-10-15 01:46:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10547954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The young man was terrified. It was ridiculously obvious, even to Norrington, drunk as he was ... and something makes him go help.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OzQueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OzQueen/gifts).



The young man was terrified. It was ridiculously obvious. Norrington had, he felt, very determinedly reached the very pinnacle of being a young old soak – absolutely sodden with the rum, he was, and the sun hardly set – and yet he could tell: That young man was terrified, and in a tavern like this, sometimes that meant that you disappeared within a more interesting crowd, and sometimes it meant that you were the most obvious and potentially enjoyable target around.

He went to help.

This consisted of getting up, staggering over to the youth’s table, and sitting down. He offered one of his pistols and he planted his bottle in front of the boy for him to take a drink – this was refused.

“Perhaps I can help you home, sir,” the youth suggested, and suddenly his eyes glinted. “Surely you’d like to … sleep it off?”

“If I were a wise, healthy man,” Norrington began, but was too drunk to stay entirely on track or shore himself up against an urge to sincerity, and continued: “If I had a home…”

There was a distinct possibility that he then proceeded to cry too hard for any of the people who’d been about to treat the young man as a snack to keep thinking it would be fun to approach. Or perhaps he’d yelled instead - a good old spittle-flecked bout of yelling would be more dignified, of course, and thus to be hoped for. The good thing about the rum was that he had no idea and wouldn’t remember.

The good thing about the young man was that he didn’t say one way or the other. He was next to Norrington in his rooms the next morning, sitting in a chair by the window. Still scared.

“My name is Bennet,” he said, a mysteriously singular appellation for someone who sounded so much like he was fresh from home, back across the oceans. Lots of people in Godforsaken pits of piracy and general iniquity did get stingy with handing out their names, though, Norrington had observed.

“Call me Jim,” he groaned.

“All right, Jim—“

“God, no. Can’t even take myself seriously like that, despite everything. Norrington it is.”

“Perhaps, in all this confusion, it bears repeating that my name is Bennet,” he said, and then had to talk with brittle determination over Norrington swearing at him. “And I’m looking for something, and I thought that perhaps you could help me.”

He was looking for a storm.

*

‘Coin’ should have been the magic word, so to speak. Norrington’s experience pointed to coins in particular, probably treasure in general being dangerous in that particular terrifying supernatural way. But if you already have the proof of magic coins, of undead creatures, and of those creatures coming back to life as warm-blooded human beings, then there was a great deal you could bring yourself to believe. And if a storm had destroyed a ship full of good men under your command, and now someone told you…

“Bennet … tell you what. This is a story that sounds absolutely idiotic. A storm with an avatar that walks and talks - that tells you what to do in order to get back what the storm took. Insane or a fairy tale, obviously. But catch me if you can, and I’ll help you catch whatever incited the bloody lunacy that is leading you on. All right?”

The young man walked over quickly to close a hand over his shoulder. He looked dreadfully flustered about it, tucking a reddening face down into his collar and mess of scarves.

“It’s going to be distinctly harder than that,” Norrington said, and turned over on his pallet with enough force that he broke the grip.

“We shall continue this discussion. At a later juncture. I have proof!” Bennet said as if forcing the words out. “For now—would you like to eat?”

“Sleep,” he said. All the same he woke up to fruit and bread lying beside his pallet. And, again, the chair by the window occupied, though this time Bennet was sleeping, hair made lighter in the midday sun.

*

It took weeks for Bennet to provide the proof he insisted he had of his claims. In the meantime he worked--after Norrington had showed him where he might be useful. He was fairly adept as an assistant at what passed for a tailor, and had much better literacy than any number of people at Tortuga, which meant he could read and write letters for payment.

Norrington sniped steadily at him to show what he claimed as his evidence, and then one night in his dingy little room, the tactic bore fruit.

“I might look like a lunatic willing to take a chance on a fresh-faced fool; I might even be one. I might want to believe you that a wild storm hunted your ship down and might be inclined to give it back. But believing in anything for a length of time is difficult at the moment.”

“You’ll only be as difficult to convince as this,” Bennet said, and turned bright red. “You need to see my tattoo.”

“You’re far more of a seafarer than I’d thought!”

“I did not have it before I encountered that storm.”

“I take it back. You sound like the prissiest miss I’ve ever met,” Norrington complained, and Bennet hid his face in his scarves as was habit.

“Touch it,” he chewed out through his buried mouth.

Norrington did, and the tattoo … fled. The black dog on Bennet’s back dashed round his hip with a flash of its legs.

“Well?” Bennet demanded, hurriedly putting his clothes back in place.

“Drunk,” Norrington whispered. “We should get drunk. You, more than usual or possibly for the first time, I'm not sure, and me … much less drunk than usual. A real celebration.”

*

“You are a sight to see when you feel hope.”

“I am willing to pay the price for it,” Norrington said, and felt brave, so unmoored from usual concerns and dubiousness. Being brave – God, what a memory to come back to, and how could it feel so natural? - he could lean companionably against Bennet, shoulder to shoulder. "And so are you a grand sight to see. Of course, you always have hope - perhaps I should say it's relief that brings new animation to your frame, to every gesture. To this willingness to do no less than dance!"

Bennet’s eyes searched the ceiling. “In no small part, it is,” he said. “And perhaps idiocy – nobody needs to see me try to dance my part.”

His own admission given, he took leave of Norrington’s company, his parting gift an after-impression of his warmth and solidity. But later that evening he danced with Norrington, after his partner was snatched away by some old salt, and though he rolled his eyes he only danced with greater perfection (surely there had been a great many lessons in his childhood) as Norrington stumbled across the dancefloor. It lasted a few moments only, as neither had any real capability.

"I keep confessions close," Norrington said at the end of the night, catching Bennet's shoulder to speak to him in a low voice. "Wine makes a mocker out of us, but whatever I have become I can still tell what to laugh at, or cry at, or never tell a soul. Feel relief, what do I care. Did I ever believe you anyway?"

“You seem to believe reassurance can only be given while you break it down in the same breath,” Bennet complained, but squeezed his shoulder in turn.

Later, Norrington thought it had started there. In their proximity Norrington had a bodily awareness that almost certainly spoke of reciprocal awareness in Bennet, and he wondered then where the dog might have run to, and he wondered also about the unmarked skin it had left behind on Bennet’s back.

*

There was gossip everywhere, stories of strange and wild things witnessed at sea; even more rife among the pirates than they had been in the Navy. Norrington brought along all information whether it seemed useful or not--Bennet certainly seemed to welcome it. Whatever Norrington relayed, Bennet mapped the places where there was overlap and tried to teast out some familiar elements with his own story.

Bennet was eager for any scrap and pieced them together well enough. And he worked harder than ever to collect money for passage, and Norrington became less likely to drink when around him. He hadn’t often much wanted to drink, after all. He’d wanted something and had had all ambitions thwarted.

Norrington searched out what he had perceived once; he received it again. In a baffled sense, it was true, with a frown on Bennet's face as if the questions his body posed him were puzzles of a sort he knew not at all. They might indeed be. That body might not have been touched as much as once before, young as he seemed. It wasn’t only the fresh face, but the general ignorance of anything in his surrounds and how it worked.

Still--they sat together always when they had free time, as good as friends at this point. He took meals with Bennet and much of the time they shared a room, though never whatever passed for a mattress within those rooms. Of course, talk turned to strategy and hopes always; he still didn’t know much about Bennet himself.

*

 

*

He waited for victory to do its work, to send Bennet mad with celebration and into his arms, into his bed. Not so mad as all that, however, his would-be lover; Bennet avoided looking at him. All evening, they were apart. When he scraped together courage and the besieged hope he held for this unspoken understanding, he joined Bennet's table and rested a hand on the back of Bennet's chair. A reward: he tapped Bennet on the back once, very light, as if to get his attention, and caused him to shudder. The reaction was great enough that he grabbed to take a drink from Norrington's cup and then hunched over the table as if to render his preceding actions hard to see. Subsequently Norrington was ignored; until, at the end of the evening, he received another reward - Bennet in his arms at last. But he got none of the rest of what played in his imagination - it was not a brief embrace but it was no more than an embrace, and Bennet whispered parting words of the evening and of the cause, a warning to watch the shadows, but his avoidant eyes met Norrington's only on the word goodnight. And then away he went and did not share the room with him that night.

Norrington thought of the touch of his fingers through clothing ... the heat of a body, though none of the softness ... scents lingering in hair and on skin and in clothes.

*

"Madness saves us. Chance, and a fool. Dionysus and his maenads taking their moment to repay some stray prayers."

“Norrington, do not dare take credit for this!”

He shot Bennet a smile. “By invoking Dionysus, do you mean? A bit lofty for me! I’m drinking less, you must have noticed.”

Bennet tapped his knuckles to his head, as if a thought needed physical taming. "Are you pleased that this might be the way to the truth?"

“An odd question. I would not say pleased—“

“Well, I can examine the smile on your face better than you, sans mirror, and that is what I would say. There is a sort of satisfaction to you, to think that no lofty ideals brought us to where we are.”

After a long argument - one that wandered away, interspersed with other topics, both more and less weighty - Norrington said at last, "I suppose that you could call my reaction to all this ... something that feels as if it makes sense."

“Your philosophies would worry me if I could contemplate them without shaking my head bare minutes later.”

“And yet you stay seated here.”

“This once, you are not wrong. No one can be wrong all the time, however hard you try—“ He broke off to grin as Norrington gave him a mocking look of censure.

“But, I must tell you--I would not bring you to despair. To nonsense swallowing all that gives you focus. Consider this an apology - a poor one – for what I’ve said.”

Bennet said nothing. His hand was on Norrington's head, however, stroking once and twice through his hair, cupping the cradle of his mind.

Let me bare my throat to you, too. When he looked up he would have avoided Bennet’s face, had he possessed shame. It was a blessing that he did not, for there was benediction in the look he received—and yet another blessing in that no shred of doubt could be perceived there. (Such a blessing, to make no impact on this man after all.)

“Lead me where you see,” Norrington said.

"I accept the challenge."

(Oh no! He made an impact after all, to be called a challenge and met almost as an equal, an investment-- Another blessing, by having a previous one denied?)

Norrington could bear no more of his own thoughts. He put a hand on Bennet’s shoulder, then moved it to curve around the back of his neck for the feel of skin, and departed for the night.

*

One way to make himself feel better that had nothing to do with drinking: a fight. And luckily enough, he could make some money that way, too.

Bennet found him in time to see him win and stagger out of the ring, knuckles bleeding, eyes not always focusing. While Norrington had the better excuse to lose consciousness, from the way Bennet blanched it was a miracle that he didn’t do it first. They staggered back to Norrington’s room.

Discontented with but the steadying arm about his shoulders, Bennet insisted to increase closeness by patting Norrington’s chest, enclosing them in a little circle of just themselves. “Or should I take you to a sawbones?” Bennet muttered. “No, no, you shall come with me now. Along the way we will find someone to send a message to a doctor. While we wait, I will assist you.”

“I don’t need seeing to. I’ve survived this before, I know what to do. My vision’s clearing, and there’s only the slightest headache. I just need rest.”

But, he admitted to himself, he also needed Bennet.

He hardly waited for the door to his room to close behind them before he leaned against the wall and pulled Bennet against him. In careful increments he maneavered them close enough for a kiss. Gorgeous dark eyes looked back at him, shocked but not wavering, and at last their lips met.

“My blood is up,” Bennet said. “And while it started with a fight, now it is not in a manner I am accustomed to.”

“Oh, accustomed, that’s hardly anything. A custom merely needs to carry on a little while to become something solid enough to be called customary, a tradition, an unquestioned tenet of society; and even in those dedicated to overthrowing such tenets, they must be carefully examined from all angles first. It's hardly any time at all, I swear.”

“You are addled. I can leave you here and go seek a doctor myself. You shall be undisturbed…”

Bennet kept speaking, but Norrington could no longer concentrate and instead lifted one of Bennet's hands to press against his chest. The wild beat of his heart took some seconds to impart its message, and then Bennet fell silent. "'Undisturbed' ... it's far too late to hope for that. Surely you can guess at a cure for this. Taking your leave would do nothing for me, body or mind or soul."

“There is nothing else I can do for you. You must know, and be able to deduce from my behaviours. I’m obviously not accustomed to this, not in any way – I have no skill to impart and have never had desire to—“

"You look at my mouth as you say so!"

Bennet shrugged, moving his gaze. “For this moment, and this moment will pass, leaving one more secret to keep between us, and not so weighty as any of the other plans we hold.

Norrington flung himself onto his back. “Is it that you would not be unholy? Is it merely some lingering thoughts on what some priests told you it means to be a good man?”

“Do not sound so—you sound so despairing,” Bennet said, as if that fact confused him.

“Am I so easily dismissed? To what purpose? What does denial make room for?”

“I don’t … I simply don’t know if I can do it. it’s such a strange thing to contemplate. Foolish, in fact! And yet, I still…”

“You turn foolish in thinking of me? You do not think that a sign? Indulgence will take away the distracting sting of swarming thoughts. Sate curiosity and be plagued no more by anything untoward. Eat side by side with me when you hunger, sleep beside me when rest will not be denied, and converse in rhetoric as much as you ever have, whether we are at the Musain, or in your rooms or mine. You lose nothing. Company is to any living creature’s advantage; we warm at the mere thought of it and the reality cannot burn us.”

His haranguing was received by stillness. At a shuddering sigh from Bennet, Norrington stopped digging the heels of his hands into his eyes and watched through still-dark, sparking vision as Bennet went to sink into a chair by the window. The quiet lasted for a few thunderous heartbeats, and then Bennet said: “I am not used any more to being so firmly in my body.”

Norrington went to him, because something kept that form anchored to the chair – was it perhaps desire, fighting its way through him? Bennet hardly moved to watch him slip off the bed, to take crouching steps like a careful hunter, to shuffle into place at his feet with all appearance of being harmless. Kneeling, Norrington put his hands on the flat of the chair’s seat on the spaces left, and Bennet’s motionlessness, as heat built in the gaps of their proximity, seemed even more an invitation. "Call me addled. Blows to the head and your half-imparted admissions, they have the same effect. I can't think. I can but plead. And I offer." --His face upturned, his lips parted.

They kissed again. Bennet pulled him up for a more preferred angle and he slid his hands over those straining thighs for leverage and deeply needed knowledge. The chaste priest jumped, skittish, and also moaned as one becoming rapidly inclined not to prize chastity much, quite godless. Norrington dug his fingers into muscle, and then slid them up. A cross between brusque and gentle, he decided to at least brush Bennet’s cock and have him see how he liked it – it would give him enough information to know if he would run, or tolerate, or adore what came next.

Instead, Norrington came to the realisation that while he should have known what came next, reality utterly failed to account for the obvious predictions.

Bennet did not, in fact, have a cock.

There was the briefest instant of horror where he wondered if it had been some kind of punishment, but then… Some niggling little details were making a lot more sense right now, he had to admit.

“Your help was all I had, Norrington. The only chance. I’m sorry that I deceived you and for so long, as I feel that … we’ve become true friends, and i…”

Hardly knowing what he did, he went to his knees again. He spread his arms, begging with empty hands. Bennet stepped close in defiance and challenge. Instantly Norrington took the chance and filled his hands with curved hips, and achieved a personal balance by emptying his head at once. That made it as nothing to press kisses along the seam of Bennet’s trousers, undo them, pull them down along with the underclothes.

Mindless, hurried – he knew how to do this. It was natural and nothing more. He kissed this woman he did not know and had her enjoy it very much indeed, most likely far more than she’d anticipated.

“You did suspect,” Bennet said with hope and horror, but Norrington would not answer yet. He had not practiced this skill in some time and somehow he wished to ask for forgiveness of his own, and to demonstrate control in this upside-down situation, and to woo his friend back to him. He hadn’t expected this but he could bring two separate ideas together; this salt-sweet taste, the thighs smooth and pressing against his face, this soft, textured heat – and his friend, Bennet, desperate and arch and loyal and hopeful. Bennet, whoever that might be, came once under his tongue, and then again.

Only then did he say, “I had no idea of what you hid. No suspicion.”

“I can hardly breathe,” Bennet said in a ring of emotion, voice edging into a wheeze, hurriedly clawing clothes away.

Underneath the undershirt there were bandages, and when those and an undershirt had been removed, the swell of breasts. Bennet took an unimpeded but uneven breath and then swayed. Before Norrington knew that he had moved, he had a heavy figure in his arms.

A woman would have wanted more tenderness, he thought - it would be an unkind sort that clutched a woman with such force; but he did feel tender, he protested to himself, and even more than he felt panicked and confused. “Bennet,” he murmured over and over, kissing the mane of hair that he still knew well.

When Bennet moved back enough to kiss his mouth, he acquiesced eagerly. Of course the face was also still familiar, of course. It was a shy business at first, with Bennet disconcerted at each motion of his mouth, pulling back from him without stepping away. It was embarrassing, perhaps, to think of where Norrington’s mouth had just been. And yet Bennet had moved to kiss him first, and despite the shyness kept trying to do it again, and Norrington firmly manoeuvred them into a deep kiss. They lingered that way.

Bennet’s breathing became harsh, almost as if the tight bindings still had an effect, but then Norrington was pushed back and the noise coalesced into a frustrated growl. Bennet’s savage side had flared. “It’s not enough. I am still … It’s as if I … Norrington!”

His name was not transformed into an invective, as per usual, no--an instruction, now: Do something about this. His name was now a delight.

“Even after my best work? You still suffer from dissatisfaction? I couldn’t bear that, not for you. Perhaps this will help— Equality, again!” He stripped off his shirt, and Bennet reached for him with eager energy. “Ah, yes, don’t stop, don’t stop. I need that touch—“

A touch that clenched when he took off his trousers, one hand around the back of his neck and the other almost immobilising one of his arms. Bennet was looking. “No surprises here,” Norrington gasped out.

“You wanted a man,” Bennet said (and it was a trial simply to watch the plush lips move and the flicker of tongue visible in the words, now that Norrington was exposed and aware all over again of desire). “Side by side, for companionship and support, for bedding—you’ve thought of that all along, up ’til now.”

“Bedding,” Norrington breathed, and steered them in the direction of that furnishing. “Let me see your face. Let me see if you flinch, and soothe you, and enjoy the knowledge of both those things far too much. It’s not so different, one body fitting into another, if only you’d let—Bennet, would you--? Oh, God…”

The young woman knew as much and as little of what to do as the young man always had. She clung to him and demanded better of him with little but the fact that she was willing to accept him, and reminded him of who he’d once been. She trusted him and was determined to match what he demonstrated. He told her that she was beautiful. She laughed.

“I refuse to be flattered—flattered further, at this juncture of our madness…”

“Please believe me… Bennet, please.”

“Terribly tempting,” she moaned, and laughed a little again.

Even in his confusion, it did not take his body long to win out. Sense came back, and he looked in renewed astonishment over his companion’s body. What had been perfect now seemed half-formed. And bruised in sickly patterns.

"I shall buy you--" He broke off. It was a man he knew, and to that man he would have offered any coin required, but his unquestioned expectation would have been that Bennet would be self-sufficient and would demand nothing from him or his profligate pockets. "I believe that the purchase of heavy coats would be a good idea. Now that the weather is turning once more. Rainy season, you know. It would be better for you to change your disguise so, to let the coats obscure the necessary," he said, no longer daring to specify who might make the purchases. "You need not be so hurt from these bindings, if you add more layers. God, I should have known, those scarves to hide your lack of Adams apple…"

“Would it be enough?” Bennet said, arms crossing over her breasts. “It has always seemed best to me to be certain that all I wanted hidden was very well hidden.”

“Surely your endowments were a consideration before you initiated your ruse? I imagine a young woman who examined a strong jaw in mirrors and still water, who weighed herself in both hands in furtive movements, over and again, ’til she decided that what was there could be convincingly pressed flat.”

Bennet sat up, surprised. "You have not had long to think on it!"

“I have been making a great work of thinking on it.” Norrington scrubbed his hands over his face. 

"That guess was true to life. I felt that I must have a chance to investigate personally what happened to the ship. No one would believe my story if it were told in the ordinary way. And I could not be a woman alone…”

“Bennet,” he said, and then surprised himself by smiling a little. “I do not blame you, but it’s funny to think I don’t really know you. It pains me. But it makes me glad you didn’t give me your full name.”

“Your pains have always seemed needless to me, nearly inexplicable. And yet, at the same time, undeniable in that you feel them strongly,” Bennet said with slight impatience. “This particular one I understand, however. Your friend is changed forever in your eyes, and has lied to you for months. But you do know me from our time together, which I spent with you in great sincerity.”

“It was a lot of pretty spectacular lying, though.”

“So at last we come to a pain where I can and will offer to lend assistance in soothing it, and need not only stand by frowning.”

A Gordian knot of problems to solve. Bennet could not cut through them, but would clearly try.

“You are a regular Jeanne d'Arc, my love—I should not have been surprised at all. Perhaps there is something to this soil you adore so, that it gives rise to more than one such a spirit combined with such a body. Or—have you any Dutch ancestry? You are quite tall, all considered, though with my prior knowledge I could have called you short, if by a trifling measure. Would you fight for the Netherlands, too? It is the sea that threatens them most greatly, I believe, but no doubt you are up to the challenge. I could assist by drinking it up; you could orate and berate in the manner of ... I believe the legend is of King Canute, yes, that is the name.”

“I will sponsor your next bout of drinking if you cease rambling.”

A pause. “I am the one half-concussed. What has happened to your head, for you to empty your purse in an effort to chase disdain?”

“’My love’, you said.”

“It does not cease. It is not sated. Changed, perhaps… There is something unrecognisable before me now. Be outside your body again, however, and I will know you once again. There is a spirit that I know regardless of anything else.”

“’My love’,” Bennet quoted again as if he had not spoken, irritably. One hand came to Norrington’s mouth, tracing every angle and curve and making a tactile caricature of it, brushing over his stubble and finding it still sticky, but not retreating. “You have been lied to. Led on, perhaps, when I thought that it could only lead nowhere and yet curtailed myself insufficiently in our interactions. That seems to be already forgiven? You have been challenged in your views – and you have not argued! Instead you conjure me more battles to fight in my revealed womanhood.”

“Ha, yes, idiocy will out, as the moon rises and fills in all its mystery..." He waved an expansive hand.

Bennet interrupted. “You hesitate and you think again, and yet you bolster me in every way you know as your first instinct. Norrington, what I can assure you of is my loyalty.” It was ‘love’, of course, that created the gap Bennet could not fill. With such blazing eyes fixed on him, Norrington wouldn’t dream of feeling hard done by. “I believe … well. This might not be flattering, now that I start to say it.”

“Speak your piece.”

A firm declaration: “You are a very strange spirit, and an admirable one.”

“I would demur. But perhaps I will just enjoy the praise. Believing unbelievable things? I started to make a habit of that some time ago.”

“I will stand with you. Know that, as you stand with me. Whatever else we are or are not, I would be your brother in that sense.”

Norrington’s sarcasms were slain at last as he gaped at Bennet, and his words could no longer keep their veneer of playfulness. “Do you listen to yourself?” he gasped out, rising onto his elbows. "It’s no wonder I continue to believe what you say and have said. Be my brother, sister. Be my lover, stranger. Be my trial, dear friend, and assure me in my strongest conviction ... that I know not a single thing." (Sarcasm was a resilient weed, growing back fast.)

"I really will sponsor your next night out," Bennet said.

"If I speak any longer I might cry." And it being the truth, Norrington for once found it easy to fall silent. He only spoke with the act of giving a last kiss to Bennet’s shoulder before giving in to sleep.


End file.
